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April 2008, Volume 22, Issue 2 - Nightmare on Pine Street |
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By Martin Goldstein
Political Director, SMCFA
I live on Pine Street and I had a nightmare the other night, the kind only somebody who’s been responsible for an election could have. It was one of those frustration dreams, where you’re trying desperately to escape something or get somewhere and you keep trying and trying but somehow you just can’t, and then you wake up, sweaty, relieved it was only a dream.
Mine was that I was running the campaign for the SMCFA-endorsed candidates for the Board of Trustees in 2006, which I did, only somehow I had screwed it up, gotten over-confident or whatever, and had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and let Tom Donner win one of the four seats up that year, and now he was a trustee instead of An-drew Walzer, and that the climate on the Board was so divisive and rancorous that here we were into Spring, and we had not settled on a contract, just like those times before under Dr. Robertson and Mr. Donner and all the wonderful stuff in the new contract didn’t happen, and parity was
pushed off the table, as it had been in the previ-ous negotiations, and we were stymied, and that this was as far as we’d ever get while I was still working at the College, and that all of my work here would end up being a useless waste of time.
Then I woke up, realized it was only a bad dream, and breathed a large and long sigh of re-lief.
Because we did win in 2006. We had a smart and gutsy leadership and a united faculty and good Board candidates and the funds to back up our 86% vote of “No Confidence” in the prior President, and we won all four seats, changing the complexion of the Board and allowing Mitra to successfully negotiate the current most excel-lent contract.
So far as I’m concerned, we owe our future as teachers here at SMC to the SMCFA PAC, which allowed us to do that, and I hope we vote to support it the way it needs to be.
I don’t want any more nightmares.
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